It was a funny statement, but not uncommon. In CircuitGuy's send-off, DragonLady wrote: "Like you, although I'm not running my own business, I still identify strongly with those who are still trying to put things back together." In point of fact, each person runs a business holding a natural monopoly on their own mind.

You can say that you have a job - maybe working for Bizco, Inc., or even the Government Agency of Counting Things - but they are only one customer out of many. How you structure your marketing is up to you. We all buy capital goods: automobiles, lawn mowers, computers, frying pans ... We all exchange our labor, even if we volunteer in social service. And we all have many such customers and clients in our lives. The essential perspective is how you perceive yourself.

The classical Marxist workers saw themselves as exploited objects - they were not paid the full value of their labor. No one was, is, or can be. The CEO who was fired by the Board is a common story: the CEO overbid their value. It happens.

The interlocking engagment is that everyone produces for LESS than someone else, which is why they hire you, buying your products or services, whether it is software design, guided missile maintenance, carpentry, or serving food. And you compete against millions of other capitalists. Ideally, we seek some sort of monopoly or monopsony, while at the same time remaining cognizant of the fact that the dinosaurs looked permanent the day before the asteroid hit. We all gain new skills, look to new opportunities, extend new interests. In theory, you could build your own car: the knowledge is there; the skills are learnable. Usually, you hire a large number of someone elses to build one for you.

You might have that full-time permanent job and think of carpentry as your hobby. But if you give your work to your friends - helping your sister-in-law panel her den - you exchange good will. Good will is the most valuable asset on any firm's ledger. When Enron imploded, it took Arthur Anderson with it. Arthur Anderson was eventually exonerated - but was dead. It died when its partners and customers abandoned it at the first hint of trouble. All the inventory in the world cannot replace lost trust.

Integrity is the coin of the realm in a market society.

Marxists and Austrians alike mistakenly derived the origins of money in commodity exchange. They rooted that in the false assumption that exchange began as calculated self-interest. In reality, people exchanged gifts to form social bonds. The habit of exchange for novelties created the opportunity for calculated advantage. The long evolution of social advancement depended on an unspoken motivation of self-interest.

Here and there across the centuries one philosopher or another came close to identifying some part of the full range and depth of that morality. Only finally in our time did one philosopher give selfishness an integrated development from the most basic facts of physical reality to the most erudite artistic creations.

Regardless of how you perceive yourself in that framework, you must buy and sell in order to live in a commercial society. The economically self-sufficient frontier farmer is an impossible myth. The psychologically self-sufficient urban producer is the true reality.

Whether you are a capitalist is your decision. It depends on how you view yourself.

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